DCOU: Lady Jane
by H.R.C. Stanley
Summary: Earth-99 A mother from Victorian times working desperately to feed what's left of her family, had become chosen by fate to become a guardian and protector for all innocent life and nature itself. Witness the origins of Lady Jane... All characters are owned and created by DC Comics.


**_DCOU: Lady Jane_**

A _DC Superheroes_ fanfiction

By H.R.C. Stanley

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**Prologue**

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_The year was 1851. The place was the county of South Yorkshire, England. My name is Alicia Collins-Huston and this was my first descent into hell..._

_I should've been gone sooner, taken away from that place; the house where I was born, where I was married, where I delivered my first child. Gone, never to return. It wasn't fair. None of this was my doing, it was all his fault, Alestair Huston._

_It began with such good auspices. He was from a wealthy and respectable family with a position at the bank. Not too old, not too young. Mother and father approved of the match, and there was a chance that I might come to love him, in time. What more could a young woman ask for?_

_The first year was at least more or less blissful. I stayed at the family croft while Alestair kept a room in town, to be close to his work. Our time together was precious and heavenly. However, shortly after Ruth was born, things began to... change. There was a scandal at the bank and Alestair soon lost his position and the apartment in town. Our time together became less and less blissful._

_He soon fell in with a bad crowd; fellows with silver tongues and an endless stream of money, making schemes. By the time I discovered he had mortgaged my ancestral land and home, it was already too late. I had no say in the matter, everything I owned had become his the moment I said 'I do'. Pastor Lovejoy told me that I shouldn't fear going to Sheffield. He said that God looks after every woman who has faith in their husbands._

_Faith, one must keep one's faith, regardless, or one is lost. By the time we made our way and moved to Sheffield, it was a living hell. I heard London was a thousand times worse, but I never did lived there, I lived here in Sheffield. Our new home was in the area where common labourers lived and thrived. We couldn't afford any better. The River Don was a little more than a stone's throw from my back step. The water reeked like toxic poison and at night, I could hear the rats as they scurried their way into the house. I feared not for my own life, but for my dear child Ruth, that they might bite her._

_Alestair worked at a nearby steel mill, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. For every hour he worked, he was paid six pence, not that I could much of that. Most of it was spent on gin and bitter at the public house. I did however make some kind of acquaintance in the form of the next door neighbour, Emma Wesley. She was tending her cousin over in Doncaster, as well as her own daughter, Miriam. My parents would've never approved of my consorting with such a lowly person as her. But mother and father were dead, and I've been feeling so very, very, very lonely inside._

_Emma worked at the nearby textile mill, where they preferred to employ women and children because of their slimmer and nimbler fingers, and they've fewer accidents, or so they said. It was still vert good to have someone to call a friend after all the time I had spent alone. Alestair, however, didn't exactly see it that way. I could've never made it through my second delivery were it not for Emma. It was a boy, which made Alestair somewhat pleased, a rare moment. He wanted to name him Albert, after the Prince. He stopped by the pub on his way to work to spread the news of the safe arrival of our son, and his heir. Then he reported work in time, only to soon die in horrible and burning agony._

_For some reason, I couldn't cry. I couldn't delude myself into believing that there was any love in my heart for Alestair Huston. He was my husband and the father of my children, nothing more. It wasn't grief for lost mate that consumed me, but fear for my children and myself. How would we survive? What could I do? i was never raised to work outside the home. My mother never prepared me for young widowhood. She didn't even tell me where babies come from._

_Emma got me a job at the same textile factory where she worked. The pay wasn't much and I had to work long hours, but it was enough to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, for now. Thanks to the gaslights, we worked before daybreak and stayed long after dusk. Some of the women who worked there never even seen the sun at all. But the saddest of all were the children who worked there as well._

_They never laughed or talked, and it was forbidden for them to play. They were more like the ghosts of children, rather than living and breath children themselves. I would rather see my Ruth dead than working in one of those hellholes. I never wanted to leave Ruth and Albert alone at home with no one but Emma's oldest girl to watch over them. Miriam was a good child, yet far too young. But what choice did I have?_

_Unless they were tending to the machines, the factory didn't tolerate children wandering about at the workplace. One day, the floor boss, Mister Osgood Proctor, paid me a great deal of attention. He seemed like a nice man at first glance, in a rather stern way. He even reminded me of my father, somewhat. He said he wanted to see me later that afternoon, something about taking me off the mill floor. __Emma didn't trust the man, but I was too naive to believe her immediately. Sometimes, I wished she wasn't so coarse and quick to doubt the behaviour of others. _

_I worked as Mr Proctor's secretary for about a month at least. The pay was much better than what I received working on the floor, and my hours were nowhere near as long. However, there were a few drawbacks to my work. The biggest of which was Mr Proctor himself. I told myself what I allowed him to do to me wasn't a sin. I consented to his caresses in order to house and feed my children. I received no thrill at his touch, experienced no joy from his rough attentions. It was something I had to endure in order to survive, nothing more. If it were a sin, then it was a very small one. After all, it only took three, maybe four minutes at most and then I could get back to my work__._

_Since then, I kept telling myself I had nothing to fear. Mr Proctor was a good man regardless, an honourable Christian man. Sure he wouldn't turn his back on the mother of his own unborn child. Emma was right, I was a fool. I still barely made enough to feed myself and my children as it was, and I couldn't afford another mouth. Emma recommended a mysterious woman by the name of Granny Catgutt. She said that all the women in the district found their way to this "professional" sooner or later. __So I made my way to this old crone and told her of my predicament, provided me with a tonic that could induce me to miscarry my child. __Mother once told me that woman was created to suffer God's punishing the human race for original sin. I never believed her until now. _

_However, just when things became peaceful again, tragedy struck. While working at the mill, Emma's arm was caught inside one of the larger machines and torn to shreds. I and a few other workers desperately tried to help her, but Proctor drove us away, ordering us to return to our duties. We let Emma bleed and die, because of him; they wrapped her in a tarp and carried her away like a sow to the slaughterhouse._

_The only person I could call a genuine friend was gone, forever; what else could go wrong? __That same evening, and I got my answer and my fortune took an even darker turn. On my way home, I found our home suddenly set ablaze burning to the ground. I raced into the house, desperate to save my children, but to no avail as the flames eventually consumed me. Searing in deep agony and pain, I fled and fell into the River Don where something happened to me that I couldn't easily explain. My eyes began to blur and I felt my scorched skin fading to nothingness, as if death itself had finally come to take me. I wanted it to end, I wanted this punishment to end so much. But even I had died in a way, I immediately felt as if I were reborn, reborn into something beyond human._

_After what seemed like a silent eternity, I emerged from that strange river and knew what I had to do. I __took retribution and used my new powers to bind the fabrics at the textile mill together into a noose which I used to strangle Osgood Proctor once and for all. However, my power went beyond my control as several more vines generated and turned over the oil lamps, setting the whole mill on fire. I made certain that all the women and children could get to safety._

_I understood so much more since then. The pattern that was Alicia Huston's life may seem so trivial, compared to what else I've glimpsed within the green. I've no children to call my own, yet I'm the mother of all. I've been chosen to help nurture the green through such poisonous times. How long I'll serve, and in what manner, isn't for me to know. What I do know is who I am now._

_I am Lady Jane..._

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_To be continued..._


End file.
